Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Once again this week we have the expert assistance of Luke Mistruzzi. He's planning to show you the ropes of stop-motion walk cycles. If it's anything like his super-smooth animated wave from last week (despite having to use my badly-made broken puppet!) I know it'll be fascinating.

It's time to get shooting! We have great resources now including 3 cuts of Dragonframe. I sent out an email about sign-up procedures with a link to our sign-up sheet. You should be able to use 515 whether I'm there or not. Ask Magda about signing up to work in the room.

We'll go over equipment booking in more detail in class and hopefully get to my timing exercise I've been dying to do for 3 weeks! Always a busy class with you guys...

Finish shooting all your raw footage and piece it together. You should be all ready for compositing at the end of this milestone. This will be your first rough cut of your entire project, not the finished piece.
If you have some gaps (a scene that needs to be reshot, or a major change) you can include a storyboard panel in its place. One way to edit your work together is to cut it in, shot by shot, to your animatic. That way you can always have a work-in-progress version of your whole film.

Please upload your work to the FTP with a clear file structure that includes the names of everyoneinvolved, the milestone, the iteration, and a movie file format compatible with QT. This includes: .mov, .mp4, .m4v, AVI. Not acceptable: .FLV, WMV. Test your file in QT to be sure it will open.

Rubric:Exemplary: All shots completed with good lighting, focus, and composition.Excellent: Almost all shots completed with mostly good lighting, focus, and composition.Acceptable: Most shots completed with only minor technical problems.Not Acceptable: Fewer than half the shots completed or many shot complete but having major technical problems.

Remember the personality-filled rug from Disney's Alladin? Or is that a carpet?

This will be partly an in-class work period so I can help you work out the staging and timing for your flour sack piece. I'll also be showing you some more tips and tricks for giving your flour sack weight & personality, both in the drawing and the timing.

And I have more 'toons for you: an incredible film by Ryan Woodwardcalled "Thought of You" as well as the 'making of' that shows his expert use of the very tools you're using to animate the humble Flour Sack